Convert Your Website Into A Website That Converts

When was the last time you took a break from building
traffic to your internet site to consider whether or not
your website is worth the effort?

Or do you spend so much time "improving" your internet site
that you never have time to advertise it? Yet there are
many beautiful looking websites that do a poor job of
converting traffic into customers.

It should be obvious that you need to strike a balance
between the time you take working on your site to raise its
conversion rate, and the time you dedicate to traffic
building activities.

So let's look at how you can convert your website into a
website that converts visitors into customers. If you are
launching a new website to promote your products or
services, make sure you look into constructing a internet
site that is an effective platform for your products.

To get your website off to a good start you will want to
avoid these common mistakes:

1. Don't make it look like a sales website.

2. Avoid posting too many banner ads.

3. Don't bore the visitor with impersonal language that is
full of pseudo-professional jargon.

4. Avoid long sentences.

5. Avoid long paragraphs.

6. Don't hide behind your website. Let people know who you
are. Post a photograph of yourself and make sure you are
smiling and looking straight out of the photo.

7. Don't confuse or distract your visitors with too many
options and links.

8. Don't try and force your visitors to sit through an
introductory movie presentation.

If you want to achieve a higher conversion rate here are
some of the things you will need to think about.

* People scan web pages much more than they read them.
Don't fight this trend, but work with it to help your
visitors navigate your page as you intend.

* Use a strong headline to draw people into your article.

* Use bullet points and numbered lists to enhance the
scanning process.

* Use short and simple sentences.

* Talk directly to your visitors in a conversational style.
Imagine you are chatting to your friends, not writing an
academic paper.

* Use contractions such as "don't" and "won't".

* Write product reviews rather than sales letters.

* Use the "you" word.

* Make your keywords stand out in bold font to help your
readers scan for gist.

* Use subheadings to split up your copy into manageable,
scannable portions.

* Use a large font.

* Space everything out.

* Post an opt-in form above the fold and offer your
visitors a bribe (such as a free report) to fill it in.

If you follow these few tips you will be way ahead of most
of your competition when it comes to setting up a website
that will convert visitors into customers and subscribers.

Free publicity is something that no Internet marketer would
turn down. Forum marketing is a a good example of a free
marketing technique that uses Online forums as a way of
advertising business websites. As long as you do it in in
good order it can benefit your business in several ways. So
what exactly is an Internet forum?

An Internet forum is a membership website on which users
can post their own comments and opinions about various
topics. Anybody who joins a forum website can read and
respond to the contents that are posted on the forum
website.

As forum members submit responses to ongoing conversations,
the topic thread grows longer and can go on for several
pages. There is no limit to how long a conversation can go
on unless the administrator decides to lock the thread.
Anybody can begin a new topic by clicking a "New Topic"
button.

To find a forum that focuses on your line of business,
simply run a search on your favourite search engine. For
example if you are selling yachts, you might enter
"yachting forum" in the search field and see what comes up.

How can you make a name for yourself and advertise your
website business without spamming a forum?

That is a serious question as there are not many active
forums that will put up with spammers. If you insist on
posting self-promotional post the post will most likely be
removed, and you might even be expelled from the forum.

The way to link back to your website from forum posts
without getting into trouble is to set up a link in the
signature file. A signature file is a short piece of text
plus a link to your website that you can have appear at the
foot of every comment you post. A signature file can be set
up in the "User Control Panel" on most forums.

On numerous forums you can add an avatar, a thumbnail-sized
photo or graphic, that'll appear each time you submit a
comment. It is a good idea to use an actual photo of
yourself to show how friendly you really are! Similarly,
it's a good idea to use your real name on the forum to let
people know that you're a real person running a real
business.

What is a good way to start out on the forum? The best
method to ease yourself into a forum is to say hello in
the "new members" section, if there is one, and then to
read and contribute to some ongoing conversations. Don't be
in too much of a hurry to post comments though. First, get
a feel for the character of the forum.

When you are ready to dive in, start by posting some
questions about topics of interest to the forum members.
Questions are always useful because they help other people
to respond and they also demonstrate a willingness to learn
on your part.

Once you have established yourself on the forum, you can
start some new topic threads of your own and begin to add
some more substantial contributions to quietly demonstrate
your expertise in your particular field.

In short, the best way to benefit from an Internet forum is
to participate fully in the life of the forum. By helping
others you will help yourself by building up a great
reputation that will make people more likely to want to
check out your website via your signature link.

In response to the phenomenal growth of Twitter, software
developers have come out with numerous free applications
designed to deliver greater functionality for twitter
users. Here's a list of some of the best applications.

1. Tweetdeck.com: This is the biggest program of the lot.
To run it you first need to download it to your hard-drive.
Once it is set up you can use it to organize your Twitter
followers into different groups so that you can deal with
all the tweets that have come in, prioritize your responses
and so on. This app is for serious tweeters.

2. Twellow.com: The Twitter yellow pages. If you want to be
found by Twitter users, post your Twitter details here.

3. TweetBeep.com: Track your keywords on Twitter.
Tweetbeep will update every day or every hour when your
keywords have been used by someone on Twitter.

4. TweetLater.com: This tool lets you write your messages
and plan them to go out at specific times. As with Tweet
beep, you can set up keyword tracking.

Tweetlater also permits you to automatically respond when
someone follows you. You can also set up a welcome message
and Tweetlater will automatically post it out to each of
your new followers.

5. SocialToo.com: This service tells you who has recently
started following you and who is no longer following you.
You can pre-write an automatic welcome message for your new
followers.

Socialtoo also allows you to run online questionnaires, and
publish them on various social networks as well as Twitter
and Facebook.

6. TwitterCounter. com: Check the number of people are
following you, or anybody else. You can plug in two
different Twitter users and compare their stats.
Twittercounter also predicts how many followers you will
have in the future. You can then post the result in a
widget on your blog.

7. Friendorfollow. com: Find out which of the people you are
following is NOT reciprocating.

8. Tweetergetter. com/hirohurl Here is neat resource, by
Gary McCaffery, that is designed to build your following on
autopilot.

9. Twittergrader. com: This tool gives you feedback about
the health of your network, how often you post messages on
Twitter and how complete your profile is. It also gives you
an overall score which you can then Tweet out on Twitter!

10. Twitthis.com: This is a great way to tweet about links
to anything that takes your fancy on the net. Post a button
to your website to encourage people to tweet your articles.

11. Tweetstats.com: this attractive tool shows you uses bar
graphs to display your performance on Twitter. Find out
when you use Twitter the most. If you wish, you can share
it with everybody else by tweeting about it!

12. Twollo.com: Set your keywords and this neat little tool
will seek out people who posted the same keywords so that
you can follow people with similar interests to yourself!

13. Is.gd: This service will shorten any URL and so free up
some characters for your main message if you wish to link
out to a website or blog post.

So you've just set up an Internet marketing business and
are hoping to make money by offering people products and
programs that will help them to make money by setting up an
Internet marketing business on the Internet.

You are not the only one. In fact you are probably up
against several hundred thousand competitors in this
tightly packed and very popular marketing niche. So the
question I asked in the title to this article is especially
relevant to you. If you're website looks pretty much the
same as all the others out there, why should anybody buy
anything from you and not from some other Tom, Dick or
Harry?

And why is it that so many people set up in this niche only
to fail dismally? You may have heard that 95% of all
Internet marketers fail to make any money on the Internet.
And most of those people were trying to make money in the
highly profitable "make money on the Internet" niche.

One of the reasons why so many people fail, apart from the
fact that they are lazy, incompetent, and unwilling to
learn, is that they never do enough to differentiate their
business from all the others and make it appealing.

Just take a look at the success stories, the top Internet
marketers, the ones that you always want to buy from.
What's special about them? What do they do that all the
failures fail to do?

You probably know about some of the successful marketers
that I'm talking about. You probably know their names.
You've probably seen their photographs on the Internet. You
might even have watched one of their videos or listened to
one of their sound recordings. Perhaps you have even bought
one of their unique products. Maybe you have come back for
some more and bought an affiliate product based on one of
their recommendations. Maybe you went so far as to drop
them a line to let them know how much you have learned from
them.

If my previous paragraph struck a chord with you, then I
have some good news for you. You already have the secret to
success right there before your eyes. In that paragraph I
told you everything. Really, I should sell that paragraph
to you for a few hundred dollars so that you will
appreciate how valuable it is. But I'm not going to do
that. Instead let me just lay out the key points, which are
the things that will make a difference to your Internet
marketing business. You don't have to be a marketing
genius, you don't have to be a technical whizz kid. You can
be just plain average and still make a lot of money on the
Internet if you know what to do and start heading in the
right direction.

Obviously, I can't teach you everything in this article,
but the one thing I can do is emphasise that in a
competitive market you need to differentiate your website
and your business from all the others out there. That is
what all those people who succeed on the Internet do.

Here's how they do it. Remember, I told you all this in
that one paragraph, but I'd like to lay it out plain and
clear for you in this checklist.

1. They let you know who they are. That's why you know
their names.

2. They show you who they are. That's why you seen their
photographs or have watched their videos.

3. They develop unique products which sets them apart from
each other and the rest of the competition.

4. The products they develop are highly targeted to appeal
to their market niche.

5. They offer other products, including affiliate products
to their list of customers.

6. Many people buy affiliate products from them because
they have learned to trust them.

7. They encourage interaction with their customer base,
through blogs, e-mail, Skype and other communications media.

So if you want to make a difference for your Internet
marketing business, use this quick checklist as a quick
guide for developing your own unique presence on the
Internet. If you want to succeed, you must learn to be
different; if you want to be different you must learn to
copy from those who have already succeeded. By taking these
steps you will make a big positive difference to your
Internet marketing business, no matter what your level of
skill or experience at the moment.